Two.

Three.

I get up and see, sitting on top of some bags, a journal. I pick it up, thumbing through it absent-mindedly. It is hers. Should I feel bad about going through it? Should that bother me? I don’t think so, clearly. And she is taking too long. I sit at the end of the bed, and start thumbing through it, reading. She wants to attend the college I am going to in the fall. She didn’t get in. It really upset her. She thinks she should have gotten in. I couldn’t care less to be honest. But it is interesting to see it from the other side. I didn’t have to deal with that rejection. I am glad.

She comes out of the bathroom. And sees what I am doing. She is either too drunk or too tired to care. She comments briefly and falls into bed, barely peeling the covers away before her body hits.

She starts talking. I don’t want to be overly rude (any more than I already have been), so I put the journal back and turn, standing up, to face her. She is crying.

“You read about college?”

“Yeah.”

“I just wanted to go there.”

I don’t know whether it is better to tell her I had gotten in or not. I don’t want to make her feel bad or have her think too much of me somehow. I nod. Trying to keep it simple and low-key.

“Where are you going?” she asks, tears still rolling.

So much for that ploy. I answer.

“That’s all I wanted. That’s it. I got good grades, I really did. I don’t understand why they would keep me out. That’s even near my boyfriend. I’m going to marry him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Landon.”

“Like Highway to Heaven?”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” I forgot how easy it is to confuse drunks.

“You love him, don’t you?” I am trying to move from schools to this boy in an effort to calm her down. I’m not going to get to leave until she is comfortable. And I do want my bed, even if it is in a hotel with a bunch of people I hate sharing a room with.

“Yes. He’s my man.”

I nod, not knowing what else to do.

“I shouldn’t have flashed all those people at the party, should I have? I mean, that was bad, wasn’t it?”

Fuck. I’m never getting to sleep. Or going home.

“Why does it matter?”

“Landon would have been mad.”

“That’s understandable.”

“Oh my God. I was acting like a whore, wasn’t I?”

“I don’t think I would go that far. You were acting . . . a bit out of control. I’m not sure the whole dancing and flashing two step thing you had going on was such a good idea.”

“Oh God. I’m so drunk. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“I know. It’s okay.”

“Will you stay here,” (Fuck. Here it comes. Fuck. I really don’t want to spend the night.) “until I fall asleep?”

“Can I sit over here on this bed?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure? I didn’t think you wanted me in your bed.”

“No, I don’t. That’s fine.”

She shifts and rolls, like a jet fighter, making herself comfortable in the bed. After two dives and wraps, I can’t see her anymore.

“Will you get the light?” She’s almost asleep already. I have to play back the sentence in my head twice before I realize what she is asking.

I get up without a word and walk to the door. And turn the light off. I stand by the door for two minutes. I can’t see anything in the room; I can only see the beach outside, lit by streetlights, hotel lights, cars, boardwalk lights. From here, the ocean looks black. And silent.

“Are you awake?”

I wait thirty seconds for her to answer.

She doesn’t. I smile and slip out the door.

It’s time to go home.

She will always be my first love. But now, years on, years later, I know more about true love. About people. And I understand, finally, the mistakes I made. The assumptions, the tricks. I understand how I loved her, not as a person, but as a trophy. A signifier.

This story was about me growing up: the journey, not the destination. But I finally know, now, upon finishing it, that it is also about preconceived notions and re-categorizing relationships I never fully understood.

It makes me a little sad.

]]> http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/12/sfb-225/feed/ 0 http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-224/ http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-224/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:00:01 +0000 tripp http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-224/ The road keeps rushing by as I sit in the seat. I’m not moving on my own, but there I am watching trees and churches and life blur by me. I shift my gaze to the road, watching the lines on the road, the dotted lines, blur into an almost imperceptible line of pale white. I turn my Discman down. I hadn’t realized how loud it was — I couldn’t hear the car over the music. I don’t like that fact. I want to be a part of the rushing, the exertion. I want to take part in the struggle of the wheels pushing against the blacktop. The friction. Sexual when thought of like this. I close my eyes, immediately feeling less dizzy. Less like I am fighting the motion. Bass pounds in my ears. I want to come, to orgasm, not out of hormones, but out of respect. Out of ecstasy. Does that make sense? Karl Hyde sings to me, reminds me I’m human. Or perhaps that I’m more than human. Not in any sort of pretentious way. But that I, as an individual, embody more of everything than I could ever think possible. This is a good feeling and part of the reason I want to feel that release. That return to feeling as if I am part of the entire world as it breathes and pumps and lives and dies. Yes, that’s it.

Hope.

I open my eyes, just enough to see, and roll the window down a bit.

It’s down for less than 10 seconds before I hear something. I’ve closed my eyes and I refuse to acknowledge. I feel a tap on my leg.

I open my eyes and see Polly looking back at me. She smiles and her mouth moves. It keeps moving.

She’s talking to me.

I pull off my headphones, feeling the air sweep over my face from the window. It’s cool, but only because it’s rushing through the window. It’s very hot air once it stops moving and settles inside the car. I don’t mind. I like the sensation and I like the feeling. It is, after all, June.

It’s hot and the car reeks of summer. The air is thick around me, smelling of heat and plastic, as cars seem to in the summer, in the heat. I can’t smell sex though. I’m glad.

“Jason has the AC on. Can you roll up your window?”

A produce stand rushes by on the left. It seems on the way to the beach, they are always on the right. As if the farmers want to catch you on your way to the beach, before you have been caught by sculptures made out of shells and cheap towels. It’s an interesting phenomenon and one I’ve never noticed, even though I’ve been to the beach with my family almost every summer since birth.

I nod at Polly, who is still looking at me expectantly, and roll the window up. It pains me. I wanted to be one with the car. With the voyage. With the trip.

It’s okay though, in the longer, bigger run of things. I don’t really need the window down. I don’t have to feel like I’m the one zooming down the road. And I don’t really want to come in the back seat of Jason’s car where he has dropped his seed in Polly so many times.

Polly, satisfied, turns back to a normal sitting position and I pull my headphones back over myself.

The music burps. Or farts, I’m not sure which. And I turn it back up.

]]> http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-224/feed/ 0 http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-223/ http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-223/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 08:00:01 +0000 tripp http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-223/ An ant crawls over my foot and I wonder, briefly, how an ant got up here. It’s cold now, the season has changed. It’s cold and it’s time to move on. Time to finish this story. Time to close this entire chapter, from then to now.

]]> http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/11/sfb-223/feed/ 0 http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/10/sfb-222/ http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/10/sfb-222/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:00:01 +0000 tripp http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com/2009/03/10/sfb-222/ I always feel uncomfortable seeing tampons in a box in a girl’s bathroom. This happened a lot more in college, but happened at this party too. Right next to the damn Cosmo. I felt like I should avert my eyes. I still do. It seems so private, such a personal thing — I shouldn’t know what brand of tampons a girl I don’t even know uses. Or whether a girl uses medium or heavy Maxi pads. It embarrasses me somehow. Can I blame society for that? I’d like to. In reality, it’s just me being a boy. Scared of what I don’t understand.

The next morning I asked her about it. She didn’t remember talking to me. Though she thought that at some point at the party, she tried to find the bathroom and walked into the bedroom. Someone had walked in after her and stopped her from drunkenly peeing on the bed. Then she realized she couldn’t remember if it was the same party or not.

I still wonder if anything horrible happened that night. I feel slightly responsible, though if I hadn’t done what I did, it certainly could have been much worse.

Of course I’m trying to make myself feel better. But the thing with the other girl was that she was out on the prowl for cock and simply dragging this desperate girl with her.

Why do I think that?

I had overheard her earlier in the evening, in the den, maybe 20 minutes before this other girl climbed onto the sofa to dance and strip. She was talking to another girl.

“If I’m ever going to fuck more than one boy in a night, it’s going to be here.”

“At this party?”

“Yeah. I meant the beach, but yeah, I want some dick tonight.”

She laughed.

Her friend nervously tittered. Her friend apparently had a bit of restraint.

“How about him?”

I turned, none too discretely, to see her quickly pointing at a boy in the corner wearing a hat. The boy that would be on the bed behind her, watching her with another girl in less than an hour.

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